First released in 1990, Whit Stillman's preppie love story looked fairly odd at the time, as if F Scott Fitzgerald had been forcibly mated with Bret Easton Ellis. Sixteen years on, it looks even odder: a thoroughly arch and self-aware homage to a Wasp subculture that it's hard to believe ever existed. But such is Stillman's confidence as a film-maker that, from the first frame, you never doubt this hothouse world for a moment. (He made it work equally well in two subsequent films, Barcelona and The Last Days of Disco.)

Shades of the Algonquin Round Table are summoned up in the privileged chit-chat of the "Sally Fowler rat pack", college-age Manhattanites who are regular attenders of, and remarkably preoccupied with, the "urban haute bourgeoisie" party circuit. Sensitive deb Audrey (Carolyn Farina) falls for outsider-in-name-only Tom Townsend (Edward Clements) - he has to rent a tux, for goodness sake - and their slow progress towards romance is the main narrative event. But it's the beautifully chiselled dialogue - counterpointed by near-static camerawork and a nicely mannered acting style - that remains the chief attraction.